


Akash

by edencomplex



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Gen, Giveaway fic, M/M, gratuitous headcanon regarding the structure and culture of the bookman clan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 10:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6075330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edencomplex/pseuds/edencomplex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is given his 23rd name two seasons after his 10th birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Akash

**Author's Note:**

> Giveaway fic for [the49thname](http://the49thname.tumblr.com), who asked for "Lavi and Bookman" or "Lavi/Allen", so I did a little bit of both.

He is given his 23rd name two seasons after his 10th birthday. There is no ceremony to it. He does not mind. The novelty of pretending to be someone else had worn off years ago.

Now names are just new words that he has to remember along with all the rest of the old panda’s teachings, and though he finds the process exasperating it keeps him on his toes, because sometimes a new name will be forthcoming mid-conversation with one of their contacts when he isn’t paying attention.

It is an old clan saying passed down among his people. As history changes when you least expect it, so must he.  

He is “Akash” now; the endless sky, the æther, the air breathed by the gods. He suspects Bookman is making fun of him, he thinks, and the way he gets attached to the humans, but sometimes he can’t help it.

He must be like the air, he knows, free and bound to no one. It is their culture, their entire way of life. Akash had been born in a caravan, he remembers, another life given to the great land-sea and the unsung pages of history. Always moving, never staying in one place for long, only talking to the humans long enough to form brief connections with them but never really _understanding_ them.

“We must keep the ancient stories alive,” his clan’s storyteller told him, when Akash had still been very young, “The humans burn bright and fast and they always, _always_ forget. You must remember what they cannot.”

“Why…?” Akash remembers asking, baffled.

“Because one day it will all come to an end,” is the reply he gets, gesturing to the whole expanse of the world around them in a way that Akash could not comprehend at the time, “and it will be up to us to teach them all that they have lost.”

“No pressure,” Akash muttered, and straightened up a little with a jolt, hoping no one had seen him talking to himself.

It is a bitterly cold London winter, but Bookman had insisted that he needed to speak to one of his sources before the year’s end, which was how Akash found himself holed up on a tiny window seat, staring out into the murky streets at hansom cabs and flower sellers and desperately wishing that he was on the other end of the city, where one could see the flags of circus tents flapping in the breeze if you craned your neck high enough.

“Watch the door,” Bookman said sternly, and Akash had made a face, because that was just the old panda’s way of saying ‘sit on your hands and stay out of trouble.’

“What does he think I’m going to do,” Akash grumbled, squashing his nose against the frosted glass and glaring out at all the hustle and bustle, “the only real problem this city has are horses shitting in the street and – huh.”

There is a boy. Akash isn’t surprised to have noticed him. He has, after all been trained to observe. He is small, even from this distance, much smaller than Akash and there is nothing remarkable about his filthy clothes or his shock of messy auburn hair, but he moves through the crush of people and vehicles like a cat on the prowl and it is enough to make him sit up with interest.

“Pickpockets,” Akash murmurs, and props his face up in his hand to watch. The boy’s hands are quick, too quick for him to follow, though when he finally wiggles out of the crowd into an open space, he notices that the boy’s coat pockets look a little heavier than they did before. Akash whistles a little lowly in appreciation.

Humans _are_ interesting he thinks, watching the boy dip his hand into the back of a gentleman’s pocket as quickly and quietly as a passing breeze and stuff a small silver snuffbox into his vest. He doesn’t know why the old panda doesn’t think so, or why the adults in his clan always shook their heads and talked about having to deal with humans like they were particularly troublesome pets.

Sure, there were a few who were interested in the history of their world but there were just as many, if not more, who cared far more about the present, and especially the future.

“This is why they never learn,” Akash hears his clan’s storyteller whisper in his head just as the boy gets a little too greedy over a fancy pocket watch, and gets grabbed from behind by a passing policeman. They are close enough now that Akash hears every word, watches the crowd disperse around them like ripples after a stone is dropped in a pond. He leans closer.

“Gerroff!” the boy snarls, kicking his tiny legs and squirming, baring his teeth like a wild animal.

The policeman looks beyond exasperated, Akash notes, but his face is kind, if not dejected. “Red, this is fifth time this month! Are you looking to get deported?”

“So deport me already!” the boy, Red, snaps, taking a swing at the police officer and scrabbling when coins fall out of his pocket and bounce over the cobblestones, some going so far as to roll sadly into the drain. “Where do ya think I’m gonna end up that’s worse than this, eh?”

The policeman sighs. “Son, I don’t know what you’ve heard but I’d rather not send a toddler to the colonies without very good reason.”

“I’m nine!”

“I don’t care. I’ve overlooked this little habit of yours long enough I think. I’m taking you back to the station.”

Red blanched. “What? No! Come on! Cosimo will kill me!”

“Then perhaps you ought to have thought about that beforehand,” the policeman told him, turning to lead the way.

“No you don’t understand!” the boy exclaims, sounding panicked now. “He’ll really, _really_ kill me!”

History changes when you least expect it, Akash repeats to himself. He is not a seer, he can’t see the ley lines of the world and how they twist and bend, but in the end it is not that hard to make a difference, he thinks, as he grabs the lip of the fancy china vase next to the window seat and, not taking his eyes off the scene playing out before him, gives it a shove.

The vase hits the floor with a crash that rattles the windows, startling passersby and making the policeman jump enough that he releases his hold on the boy, who scrambles for the money he dropped and takes off at a run.

“Red!” the policeman shouts after him, but it’s too late.  The boy is gone, slipping back through the crowds like an eel.

 He pauses at the opposite end of the street though, just long enough that Akash finds his gaze caught by the clearest eyes he has ever seen in his life, light and grey like the winter sky. The boy _grins_ , and then he is gone.

 Akash suspects he will never see him again, but he records the memory of eyes that will never be described in any history book, and tells himself he is just doing his job. He says as much to Bookman when he stalks out of the back room with his contact, who just about faints at the sight of his precious vase in pieces all over the floor.

“It was a fake anyway,” Akash says, in lieu of an apology, and gets smacked upside the head for his cheek.

“You are not the guiding hand of fate,” Bookman lectures him later, when they are alone and he finally wrings the truth from Akash. “You are an observer of history, not its writer.”

Akash scowls, tucks the memory of that winter away in his mind and never speaks of it again.

8 years and 26 more names later he goes to a little German town and there he finds Allen Walker.

 _We go wherever the path of fate leads us_ , he hears his clan’s storyteller whisper in his head. But there is a page he thinks, in the great book of life where the lives of every human being is recorded, where there is a splash of ink on the pathway that had been Allen’s journey, _would_ have been Allen’s _life_ , had things been different that day.

It’s not an entire chapter in the history books, not even a paragraph or a caption, but his eyes are as grey and clear as he remembers them and elation fills his chest, as though he had signed his name at the bottom of a very long, very wordy page.

He has not turned the tide of history, not by any measure, but had immersed himself in it and found himself _wanting_.

It is a very human emotion. He decides that he likes it.

“I’m Lavi,” he says, and _smiles_.

**END.**


End file.
